Nike shares up, Adidas and Puma rise too

The US stock market reacted positively to Nike, which also gave the shares of the two German competitors Adidas and Puma a boost on Friday. Nike’s shares rose by almost 10 percent in pre-market trading in the US. In regular trading, this would mean the highest level in more than three months.

Adidas’ shares rose by 3.8 percent to 199.40 euros, putting Adidas in the top position in the DAX. This was after the shares had fallen to their lowest level since April the day before, in an otherwise positive market. Over the whole of 2025, however, there is still a minus of approximately 16 percent. Puma’s shares gained 4.8 percent on Friday, rising to 23.16 euros, the highest level since the end of May. Since the beginning of the year, the share price development, with a fall of 48 percent, is still very weak.

Nike gave investors hope during its most recent quarterly update that the prolonged weak development was coming to an end. In addition, the company wants to gradually and fully compensate for the high additional costs caused by US import duties on products from production countries with other measures. The import duties have been a burden on the industry for some time. The sportswear giant also had to contend with declining revenue at the end of its 2024/2025 financial year. However, this decline was less severe than initially feared.

For the first quarter of the new financial year, Nike expects a revenue decline of only around 5 percent, within the range of 1 to 9 percent. Analysts had expected a significantly weaker revenue forecast. However, the Americans did not give a concrete outlook for the new financial year, due to the uncertain situation regarding US trade policy, among other things.

Nike’s announcements were generally well received by analysts. The results, outlook and signals have greatly strengthened their confidence that the optimal scenario is slowly becoming a reality, noted Deutsche Bank Research analyst Krisztina Katai. The negative profit trend finally seems to be over.

Randal Konik of investment bank Jefferies also viewed the development positively. Competitive pressure is decreasing, Nike is performing better and in the future it will be easier to surpass comparative figures.

Matthew Boss, equity research analyst at JPMorgan, lowered his earnings expectations for the 2025/2026 and 2026/2027 financial years, but expects an average profit increase of 20 percent per year for Nike between 2026 and 2029.

‘The worst is over,’ wrote Lorraine Hutchinson of Bank of America. She expects a return to growth in the second half of the year.